The Waiting Room

“Every day, I try to see through the patient lens, and I ask: what can we do to change this broken system? To deliver healthcare in a way that treats people with the dignity they deserve? Will I do better tomorrow?”

This oncology clinician is passionate about patients being able to get the care they need. But every day he observes how social determinants of health, like access to housing, transportation or childcare, prevent this from being possible. “Is it ethical to start chemo for a patient who has no home to return to?” he contemplated. “Who was this system designed for?

As our conversation unfolded, I found myself more and more curious about why he cared so deeply about improving healthcare, so I inquired. “I’m Lebanese,” he began. “I grew up in Beirut during the civil war. People died in the streets every day and human life didn’t matter to those doing the killing. This is why I chose to go into the medical field.”

His openness brought me to tears. “When I reflect on what I see in healthcare today, I find myself wondering: how much better are we, really?” he said. “But everyone can do something small within the sphere of their control. Back home, my focus was education. Today, my focus is on each human being in front of me and remembering that we all have a story.”

Listener Poet Jenny Hegland

IHI Forum

December 2023

Back home in Lebanon, the war was at its worst

in grades five, six, and seven

We slept inside the cold, cinder block stairwells

of a nearby building

Ten of us would fight for the spot

closest the candlelight

to finish our homework in the flickers

Staying focused kept us calm

‘cuz our teacher didn’t give a damn

why the math paper couldn’t get done

Before we’d leave for class each morning

mom would hug us in the kitchen, one-by-one

look you straight in the eyes, saying

what her words never would

(they knew killing a child

would send the strongest message)

Every day when I look in the mirror

I brush back my dark black curls

catch a quick glimpse of the scar

on the right side of my forehead

Many times as the snipers tried, this

was the closest they came

Having gotten good at dodging shots in the streets

hightailing, hill to hill, I’m among the lucky

Unlike too many patients I care for today

Most have to travel a long distance

only one bridge from there to here

four hours, on a good day

One patient, a single mom of three

has breast cancer

Couldn’t drop her kids to school

in time to make her appointment so

they sit with her in the waiting room

“Sorry, ma’am – we don’t allow children

and our policy clearly states

you’ll forfeit your appointment

if more than twenty minutes late”

The look in her eyes

no different from mom’s

those mornings in our Beirut kitchen

as she gazed her silent goodbyes

More Poems & Stories

No Words Exist (Why They’re Afraid of Us)

“I was at a birth recently and thought: This is why they are so afraid of us. They can’t control this” She sat on her couch with a mug of coffee. She is a queer, femme, mother of two who has worked in reproductive health for over two decades.

Housewarming

Interspersed with the joys and worries of being a gramma, she recounted her own grandparents – challenges and opportunities of caring for them, grief of losing them, gratitude for being loved by them, and the everyday experiences of now living in their home.

Language of Diagnosis

What is pain without a diagnosis? This is what occupied this patient before she even received her breast cancer diagnosis about a year ago.

Gratitude

She told me that she picked her battles more and was trying to be less of a people pleaser.

Growth Phase

He ended up talking about his son, who is now his daughter. Another part of his experience of continual growth and soul-opening.

Dinner

Her values and perspective on life had changed as she considered ways to spend more time with her husband.

American Sonnet for Father Day and the Wisdom Tree

“When I see an old dude who’s optimistic, living his life, I always stop to talk to him to try to find out what he has done.”

enough

This nurse was considering leaving a position where she spent many years due to issues she experienced and witnessed at her hospital.

Variant

Many of the people he worked with had to develop a new identity in the context of their caregiving responsibilities. “It’s as if they need to become a new variant of themselves.”

In the River You May Find Yourself

“We’re taught to enter a room with a specific goal... with assumptions... with a hypothesis about what may be going on with the patient.”

The Shift

She believes that most of those who have connected with ACS began with a personal connection, but then, according to her, “you evolve, and you shift.”

Walk With Me

With her background in counseling and psychology, she works to bring people together and support patients.

Legacy of Hope

Although at times she becomes discouraged about the inequalities in the world, she is determined to do her part by making sure everyone has access to quality healthcare.

Living in the Magic

This person radiated gratitude and hope. She shared that she discovered she was expecting a son just before receiving a lung cancer diagnosis at the age of 31.

The House Medicine Built

She had an epiphany as a child — that love could heal the world. Now, as a seasoned physician, there’s still a part of her that believes in the power of love, but not with the same idealism she once held.

Why Neurologists Write

He talked about recently speaking with a patient who experiences migraines: she is seeking the truth, he is seeking the truth to find a way to work with her, wanting to give more than a diagnosis and prognosis.

I Am Stuck on a Wheel That Keeps Turning

To her, the surgical world has felt like “a wheel that keeps spinning,” a seemingly endless pursuit towards an undefinable goal.

List

While she kept an open mind throughout medical school, the field of OB/GYN ticked off all the boxes for her.

Where Do the Children Play?

“I always took strength from the way little kids would handle it.”

We Shall Know Her Name

“The historic traumas of African-American women — all African-Americans — lead us to not be the first people at the doctors, nor the first to get surgery.”

One Human Body

“Sometimes I feel so helpless,” said this resident, reflecting on all of the challenges faced by the young patients and their families whom she served. Over the last several days, she has become increasingly overwhelmed by events in the news and has questioned her ability to make a difference in the world.

Stories with My Father

“It’s hard to watch the decline and sometimes hard to visit but it weighs on me not to,” she said. Her father had always been an elaborate storyteller and an alive, vibrant man with a big voice.

We Matter, Guys

The Good Listening Project was honored to once again take part in the annual KNN conference in Minneapolis this year. Jenny closed the session by writing this harvest poem that captured the voices and sentiments shared.

In The Middle Way

After a history of crippling endometriosis, this woman had an arduous, ongoing struggle with her healthcare community for the right to have a hysterectomy. She was finally granted approval at the age of 29. “It had been like pulling teeth, but finally I felt free,” she told me.

'O ka mele

Her childhood was infused with Hawaiian-Polynesian music and dance, taught to her father by his mother. Today, her life’s work is to connect the unbelievable discoveries of molecularly focused pre-clinical research directly to the patient experience of treatment.

On the darkest days

She is a single mother born to a single mother and had to grow up fast. She is juggling a sticky work situation, her own anxiety and depression, and being away from home and her kids.

This Healing Place

I was invited to create a group poem for forty participants at the Arts in Healing luncheon, hosted by the Inova Health Foundation in partnership with the board.

What You Will Call Me

What does it mean for people living with Sickle Cell Disease to be seen, heard, and understood? For this person, it meant finding – and using – her voice to advocate for herself and for others.